


New To The Surface

by Many Dragons (medeadea)



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-03 03:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14560116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medeadea/pseuds/Many%20Dragons
Summary: Sigyn Brosca picked up a dwarf in Orzammar. Not just any dwarf, but one from the smith caste, and she promised to escort her out of the city and the Frostback Mountains. Can her life even get any weirder?





	New To The Surface

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GreyPezzola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyPezzola/gifts).



> Hey there GreyPezzola!  
> I hope you don't mind that I tried my hand at writing your lovely Sigyn, I admit I fell a little bit (read: a lot) in love with her when I went through your writing! If anything's glaringly off please tell me and I'll change it. This being an anonymous exchange I had no real possibility to double check with you ^^  
> Now, I hope you enjoy!

Dagna is about the weirdest smith caste dwarf Sigyn has ever met. Or well, _was_ , considering she’s now watching the clouds float overhead with eyes big as dinner plates. She’s still weird, but not smith caste anymore. Technically.

“Are they all like this?” Dagna asks, voice a little rough from straining her neck for so long. She should probably quit doing that, there’ll be enough need to look up to the humans at the circle, no need to get a crick in the neck before she even reaches it. Then again, Sigyn can’t really blame her when they’ve only been out of Orzammar for two days.

Dagna’s questions have dwindled in number today, but Sigyn’s still attentive enough to know she’s talking about the birds.

“No, some of them are bigger. These are just the noise making ones, songbirds. They still shit everywhere, but not as much as the pigeons where people live.”

It’s more questions than she had asked Duncan herself when he’d taken her to the surface, but close enough in content. Dagna has a habit of dismantling facts into smaller portions instead of connecting them into groups like Sigyn does, but she still needs new starting points for new thought chains. Sigyn hasn’t seen her build a category yet, or stick by one even.

After all, Dagna had been the one to approach Sigyn, and not a moment had her eyes lingered on the brand. All that counted was that Sigyn would leave Orzammar and might be able to help. They’ve been on polite terms ever since.

“What’s the circle like?” Dagna asks in the evening after they’ve put up their tents and Sigyn shrugs.

“A tower. Last I saw, it was full of corpses. Might want to ask Wynne for more, it’s not like I spent a moment longer than necessary in there.”

But Wynne is… off somewhere and then Dagna continues.

“I have! Yesterday, thought she might be the best to ask, but she didn’t really tell me much. Maybe I asked wrong, I don’t know. And maybe you have a different perspective.”

“And what kind of perspective would that be?” Sigyn asks and looks at her sidelong. Her voice came out sharper than intended, just a little.

“Dwarf perspective? I don’t imagine our homes were much alike, but—”

“They sure sodding weren’t.”

And that’s it, they’re having this conversation now, aren’t they.

Dagna bites her lip and ducks her head.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs.

“Whatever for? ‘S not _your_ fault I’ve a brand, though you’re certainly the first dwarf I’ve seen just ignore it.”

Sigyn can feel herself getting louder but she can’t really stop it. She’d kept waiting for the other shoe to drop on Dagna, to see her pull a grimace at Sigyn from the corner of her eye or for some derisive comment to slip out. Not like it had taken _Oghren_ long.

But Dagna wrinkles her brows and lifts her hands, almost touching Sigyn’s shoulders.

“I didn’t mean to remind you, that’s all. We’re the same now, aren’t we?”

Sigyn doesn’t have time to answer because the men are back from washing and Alistair taps her shoulder for a quick kiss on her cheek. It breaks the moment and its tension and suddenly there’s wet dog right in her face and Zevran almost stumbles over His Lordship and whatever they’ve been talking about has even Sten raise his voice over his usual grumbling.

They’re _loud_.

“The water is amazing Sigyn, it’s almost not cold enough to encase your limbs in ice,” Alistair enthuses about the river, “we’ll be out of the mountains soon.”

She grins at him but shudders when he sticks his cold fingers under her collar and soon she’s right in the middle of the scuffle.

 

Later that night, after a bath and dinner cooked by Zevran, Sigyn finds herself sitting between Alistair and Dagna and remembers their earlier conversation. Maybe it’s the food or the cleanliness that make her feel more inclined to answer Dagna’s questions, but she leans over and lightly claps her shoulder. They might not be the same at all, on the surface or not, but Dagna seems to respect her, and that’s… a lot.

“You wanted to know what the circle was like.”

Dagna nods quickly and smiles. Alistair pricks up his ears and Sigyn continues.

“Thing is, Orzammar wasn’t the same for you as it was for me, and the circle isn’t the same depending on who you are either. Far as I know there are mages, templars, tranquil and chantry folk supposed to be there. How a dwarf is gonna fit I have no idea.”

She looks over at Alistair to check and he nods.

“If you’re there to study magic you’ll have to make your own place. Probably between the tranquil and the enchanters,” he amends softly.

“Oooohhh, the tranquil are those mages that got cut off from the fade, right? And their emotions.”

The last sentence is said with a puzzled frown, like Dagna can’t quite grasp what she’s saying, and that very much rings a bell for Sigyn, too. The tranquil she’d met had creeped her out at first glance, but—

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a person and then lose all your emotions. What do you even _do_ with your time if you’re all logic and no feel?”

Sigyn shakes herself, trying to push the memories back that come to her mind unbidden, of a time when she couldn’t afford to be anything but driven by logic, lest—

But no, it’s not the same, even if it might feel like it. Still.

“You’d be surprised,” she says, voice rough, almost like a growl wants to come out and Alistair tenses beside her.

He’s not the only one to notice her discomfort though, because Dagna quickly smiles and shrugs.

“I guess I’ll see, and ask them myself.

“I wonder though, it’s gotta be so impractical to suddenly lose your magic if you’ve always had it. Suddenly can’t light a fire with your mind anymore or heat your tea. Bang your toe really hard and not soothe it right then. Move stuff from across the room or make this beautiful snow in your own room just because you can. I’d never even move anymore probably…”

She trails off into silence as if she’d suddenly forgotten to speak her thoughts out loud or they’re coming too fast for her mouth to keep up and therefore decided to jump over each other where no one else can follow them. It’s kind of adorable.

Alistair clears his throat, and yeah, of the three of them he’s definitely the authority on all things magic. Possibly. Who knows what kinds of information Dagna got her fingers on in Orzammar. She was smith caste after all, those don’t dabble in history and arcane knowledge beyond the immediately applicable. Or shouldn’t.

“Mages are discouraged from using magic for frivolous stuff. From what I’ve seen they make fireballs and meditate. A snowstorm in your room gets you a scolding from the chantry mothers on the dangers of attracting demons,” Alistair explains and trails off himself.

Dagna stares at him intensely in the way that Sigyn has learned means ‘I am listening and immediately spinning new tangents from what you said’ but that Alistair hasn’t yet had to witness first-hand. There’s a distinct tugging in Sigyn’s chest from how his voice sounds when it gives out that makes her want to… well, she doesn’t really know what, but _do something_ in any case. Something nice if possible.

When Alistair makes no sign of continuing Dagna frowns.

“Well, demons are bad. Imagine what mages could do if there were no demons to fear! I’ve heard they can make flowers bloom, what if they could have crops that grow all year? That would be amazing, there’s always hungry people. On the surface, too, right?”

Sigyn laughs. That’s not exactly what she’d call a good idea and she says as much.

“Imagine you’re a farmer on the surface and your new neighbour grows his vegetables with magic. That’ll go over as well as if your father’s competition pulls finished pauldrons out of his sodding arse, I promise. Sky doesn’t make everyone just share what they have with each other.”

Dagna sighs, point taken.

“But what if the mages get— hmm, I dunno, employed by the king like— like tax collectors! So they don’t go around taking money but instead make farms grow!”

“That still doesn’t solve the problem with the demons, though.”

“I didn’t think demons worked like that,” Dagna grouses but drops the thought.

It’s a tricky thing, the difference between surface and Orzammar. Sigyn knows the feeling of trying to find where the border is between same and other, where humans are foreign to her and where they’re the same sodding idiots as any dwarf. It’s still a vague thing in her mind and sometimes she stumbles over it without realising and gets those _looks_. It’s probably still gonna be that way for a while, provided she doesn’t die.

Stone, she has so much work ahead. Dagna almost made her forget.

 

They talk, for the rest of the evening, about this and that, with Alistair chiming in occasionally until Sten quietly but insistently asks them for silence. And they keep going for the few days it takes them out of the Frostbacks and to the shore of Lake Calenhad, until they split up, Dagna crossing over to the tower and Sigyn continuing towards Denerim.

She doesn’t want to call it the most thought provoking days she’s ever had, because the past year has presented her with some abstruse novelties, but it’s definitely up there, with the rain and the werewolves and the incomprehensible appreciation the people around her have for Sigyn.

A dwarf that’s fascinated by magic and asks her, _Sigyn_ , for advice and opinion, keeps bouncing the most outlandish yet logical ideas off of, and is on top of that adorably blunderous?

The world is a strange, strange place, and all she can do is try to keep up and keep the good things, the great people, close to her and do her best to do them justice.

Sentimentality is for when she becomes old.


End file.
